Commissioned by a world appealing for sustainable efforts, those charged with the development and restoration of our nation’s infrastructure have discovered a need for alternatives to prior unsustainable designs. In order to contend with this demand for innovation, civil engineers must continue to foster sustainable practices in their profession. This state of affairs requires that alternative construction methods be conveyed to those capable of implementing fresh approaches.
Mechanisms for controlling stormwater runoff are one such item of infrastructure which benefit from this re-evaluation of intrinsic conventions. Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) have emerged as the result addressing the need for more sustainable stormwater control. With the aforementioned interest in sustainable practices and the requisite for new infrastructure, a system to convey the efficacy of BMPs can assist in the adoption of these practices as mainstream applications.
To help realize this premise, a software package was developed to introduce the concept of sustainable hydrological developments to those with the interest, influence, or capability to include these features in their designs. This package includes a fully-customizable BMP database, a knowledge-based expert system able to recommend BMPs for a site, and a component to rate the sustainability of a site’s hydrological function. The customizable BMP database allows for the centralization of alterative stormwater management practices molded to the destination environment. The expert system is an interactive way to provide less-experienced personnel with contending BMPs backed by expert intuition. Sustainability is a subjective topic, and to properly rate a development as sustainable, a more firm definition of sustainability is necessary in order to convey a clear message and provide for dependable comparisons. Therefore, several fuzzy logic applications are incorporated into this software program to clarify measures of hydrological sustainability.
This software package provides an interactive system for those who wish to learn about stormwater BMPs. While several tools exist to aid in the design and placement of BMPs, these programs often expect the user to collect a significant amount of information before they are of use. By using the system developed here, the dissemination of knowledge held by established professionals can be conveyed to those with a lesser understanding of BMPs. This in turn promotes BMPs to a wider audience where the program acts as a higher level application that is able to supplement existing software, or perform independently.